1. Field of the Invention
One aspect of the present invention generally relates to an electronic method and system for monitoring containers and products.
2. Background Art
Quality campaigns are typically performed in powertrain manufacturing environments in a passive and manual manner. A quality campaign is typically initiated when a potential quality issue with respect to an engine or transmission, otherwise referred to as products, becomes known. A “campaign” of potential suspect products can be initiated, often resulting in a quarantine, stop ship and/or recall of the product with the necessary repairs being performed.
Depending on the location of the product, a different set of steps are typically conducted with respect to the quality campaign. If the product is in transit before final vehicle shipment, the product may be fixed at the assembly plant. If the product is already in a vehicle within the assembly plant, then the shipment may be stopped. If the product is in a vehicle and has left the assembly plant, then the product is typically fixed at the dealer location. The extreme manufacturing conditions in vehicle assembly plants make the execution of quality campaigns difficult.
Various tracking systems have been devised to aid in the execution of quality campaigns. These systems may provide (1) inventory management, (2) location tracking, (3) cluster management, (4) shipping information management, and/or (5) accounts receivable triggering. These systems can assist in quality campaigns, but are not proactive in nature.
According to one system, products, e.g. engines and transmissions, are uniquely identified via a unique ID. The engines and transmissions are loaded onto containers, for example, metal racks, which have to endure extremely harsh conditions. The metal racks are typically stored outside and are typically used during trimodal shipments. It is difficult to keep track of the metal racks because they cannot be permanently tagged with barcode stickers because of the extreme elements. Moreover, the engines and transmission may look the same but are calibrated differently depending on the vehicle type they are married into. A visual inspection to ensure that all the engines and transmissions in a rack are of a similar type is not a reliable or manually feasible method of error proofing mixed racks. Shipments of mixed racks from powertrain plants tend to cause misbuilds at the vehicle assembly plants, resulting in major cost issues.
In many situations, a supplier and/or a powertrain plant identifies the existence of a campaign issue. For example, a supplier may flag a series of defective soft camshafts that were accidently shipped to a powertrain plant for assembly. The supplier may provide the shipment date of the defective parts, allowing the powertrain plant to identify the potential universe of engines manufactured with the defective soft camshafts. Due to the complexities of the powertrain plant's logistics system, the powertrain plant may pad the suspect production sufficiently to cover about 4-5 times the amount of original suspects. Disadvantageously, a large number of good engines are flagged as suspects using this system.
Moreover, the assembly plant may be aware of the engine or transmission unique ID of the potential suspects, but is not aware of the exact location of engine or transmission. Therefore, the potential suspects may still be at a powertrain plant, at a warehouse or in transit to one or more assembly plants.
Manually tracking of suspect engines or transmission via handheld scanners is usually cost prohibitive and sometimes impractical, as the metal racks containing them are stacked vertically. If the suspects are found at the assembly plant at the time of install into vehicle, the cost associated with stopping the line and reconfiguring the pipeline is extremely difficult.
Managing and tracking metal racks used for transportation of engines and transmissions is also an issue as attrition of the racks is very common due to unavailability of their location information.
In light of the foregoing, an electronic method and system for monitoring containers and products is needed. What is also needed is an electronic method and system for managing containers and products.